Australia Rejects Recognition of Aboriginals - For Shame

And you think people understand the politics of countries they do live in?

It is sad that the native community have become a minority after having their land taken from them and being marginalised for so long. I'm sure the Voice wouldn't have been perfect but it would have at least been an acknowledgement of the country's original inhabitants and a step in the right direction.

It is interesting that the changing demographics of immigration, as a poster above noted, seems to have squeezed the vote a bit more. Could it be a case of different minorities not wanting to see another given a more prominent role?

From what I've read about this referendum, I'd say it failed because what the Voice was going to be and the powers it was going to have didn't seem to be clearly defined and this left it open to be picked apart. It seemed that its supporters believed more in the ideal behind it and thought it would be enough to carry it, as opposed to more detailed information abouts its workings.

I've never been to Australia and the only Australian I know to any serious degree is a backward bigot. I know how he would have voted and his reasons why but I think he couldn't be considered a modern Australian. Australia does have its rep but places like Sydney and Melbourne seem to be fairly progressive places. I guess its just bringing the urban/rural divide back into focus.

Think that an amendment for just recognition would have failed too, it's too vague. The constitutionality of any ownership or jurisdiction would have come up constantly for anything involving aboriginals.

The voice didn't need an amendment but at least its one was far more limited in how it could be interpreted.

How many travellers have you ever interacted with….?

I've lived in a lot of countries, for fairly long periods of time, due to business. As time goes on you realise that racism isn't nearly as prevalent in other places as people would have you believe. in my experience Australians certainly aren't particularly racist, in fact I think very few places would be as multicultural as the big Australian cities. And while cities might be outliers in many other countries that's not really the case in Australia, most of the population in coastal urban areas.

In general though, everywhere I've gone, people know that it's best to judge people on their own characters rather than the group they come from. To an extent that breaks down a bit when there are groups that are more likely to be involved in property crime, but almost everyone knows that you can't paint everyone with the same brush. It's like people carry out racial profiling the same as some police forces do.

Despite all the criticism of Australians here, I would have found white Australians were far more open to indigenous people than the Irish are towards Travellers. Don't get me wrong at all, there are very clear reasons why people here have issues with Travellers and the white Australians have with the indigenous people. But Irish people have no business at all getting sanctimonious about issues on the far side of the world that they have no lived experience of.

We literally let them do whatever they want, allow ridiculous levels of crime to take place in the open, animal cruelty, child neglect, abuse of women etc. and all reporting on issues is completely blanked so they don't look bad. Yet in liberal lunatic land they are the victims in every way.

Which is why I keep saying any comparison with Australia is comical considering the abuse aboriginal people still get in their homeland.

In fairness the friendliest most sincere racists I've encountered were Australian. They tended to be from the outback where their daddy's and daddy's before them grew up shooting abos who they saw as a pest.

I was shocked when I learnt that they were getting away with that up until recent generations.

The more sincere they were the more unnerving it was.

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On the Australian racist thing I think you have to drill down a bit more than just saying they are a racist people.

Yes they are a diverse society with a lot of different cultures that live and work together.

But there attitude to aboriginals goes beyond that.

Similar to Ireland where you see an increased level of diversity, and people will consider themselves as not being racist, but at the same time have a viseral hatred for travelers.

Quite a lot of Irish people have relatives in Australia. My family there, any that have commented, voted yes. But they say it was defeated by a few factors. One , the actual working of the proposal was confused, allowing many people to attack it while at the same time supporting Aboriginal rights. The other , is that Mr Murdoch and his media played a big part in it's defeat. And finally, many Australians are deeply opposed to any rights for the Aboriginal population. They deny that their own ancestors stole the aboriginal lands and marginalised the original populations. It is hard for rural populations, proud of their huge farms and farm businesses, to admit it was all stolen, almost like an existential crisis. in general the questions about the Aboriginal populations were received, not as simple enquiry, but rather as criticism. . In many rural towns I visited, there were local museums. All very interesting, but they all , without exception, began their collections from the time white settlers arrived in the area. No information about the peoples who lived their before them. It was like the Aboriginal population never existed. It was uncanny how often this was repeated in town after town.

That was my experience when I lived there, but I'd also add for many they really don't understand, or can't accept how dependent their current lifestyles is entirely dependent on China buying commodities mined from same said stolen land.

I met one really interesting old Australian from a wheatbelt town who had served in Vietnam. He said when he was a kid they were pretty taught to view Aboriginals as vermin that you could shoot if they're on your farm. He then went to Vietnam and felt the same way about the Vietnamese.

His upbringing he said was typical of Victorian eugenic view that fossilized for generations in the Australian outback.

However when he served his time in Vietnam he took off on his world travel and in England he met an Irish girl, followed her back to northern Ireland and it was there that he saw white Europeans at war that he realised that all Vietnamese and Aboriginals are just people like him too.

He spent the rest of his life working in conflict resolution. An amazing guy and my only regret was not remembering his name.

He said racism in Australia is more than a human reaction, it's an Australian right.